The discovery of the boomerang

Contrary to popular opinion, the boomerang was not invented by the Australian aboriginals. They were being used long before the aboriginals ever thought of using them. Here is the real story of how they were first discovered.

A stick becomes a boomerang

The boomerang was discovered accidentally by an European soldier who picked up a stick one day, and threw it at someone else. It did a circle, came back and hit him in the eye. As a result of this, he lost the sight in that left eye.

He thought that this was an act of God. He kept the stick until he died in battle a few years later.

Another man then took this stick and wondered why the first guy had kept it. He too threw it away, and it came back to him to. He was carrying his shield, and so he deflected it away with that.

The boomerang had been discovered.

After that the various artisans of the time constructed many replicas of this first stick, so much so, that a lot of famous people actually collected them.

One of them was the great King Tutankhamen, the Egyptian Pharaoh, who lived way back in ancient times. He ruled between the years of 1332 BC to 1323 BC. There was a large collection of boomerangs found in his tomb.

The young King apparently loved to throw his returning sticks. One of them was the cause of his death though.

This was only discovered during a computed tomography (CT) scan, a medical imaging procedure that was carried out in the year 2005 on his remains. This conclusively showed that he had suffered a left leg fracture just shortly before his untimely death.

The leg became infected, and that was the end of the young King. No penicillin in those days. He was only eighteen years of age. His boomerang had come back to him for the last time.

Hunting sticks, ancestors of the boomerang

Hunting sticks had been used for thousands of years, to hit animals on the head with, or to throw at them. The owners took great pride of their own sticks, often carving them into intricate, and elaborate designs.

Apparently it was not only wooden sticks that were used though. Mammoth tasks also nicely fitted the bill here too. These were also carved by their owners.

A few years ago, this was proven to be true. A large carved mammoth tusk was carbon-dated to be at least 20,300 years old.

It was probably even older, because the carving of the object upset the calculation a bit. The museum top nobs didn't want the artifact to be destroyed either, or tampered with. The design might have been interfered with.

Some enthusiastic scientist even picked one of these giant mammoth tusk fossils up, and threw it himself. He threw it the surprising distance of one hundred feet against a slight head wind. His record still stands, but he doesn't work as an archaeologist for that particular museum anymore.

The reason that the Australian Aboriginal has been credited with the discovery of the boomerang was because there were no large buffaloes, camels, zebras, or elephants in Australia. Australia had much smaller animals for them to hunt.

It would not be correct to say that they were not smart enough to invent spears, or bow and arrows. They just did not need them.

In all other parts of the world, hunters, and also soldiers, stopped using hunting sticks or, "kylies" as they are more accurately called. This is the correct name for a hunting stick. These hunters needed something more efficient. They invented spears, and the bow and arrow.

The oldest boomerang ever discovered in Australia was a mere 14,000 years old. They kept using it for all that time. They depended on it to catch their food with.

They would select an appropriately shaped piece of wood usually a piece from near the root of the tree, where the tree trunk meets the roots, or they would often use a piece of the root itself. This piece is often far more sinewy, and stronger, and also more moist than other pieces that could have been selected from further up in the tree.

The aboriginals were also not great tree climbers, being frightened of heights.

Trees were revered and respected as their elders in the world, and were not to be climbed without permission from the chief elder of their tribe. If the angle was not quite right. they would heat this moist piece of wood in their fire, and so bend it slightly.

They would carve designs into them both to help the flight of the boomerang and as a design factor to indicate who the boomerang belonged to. Intricate, and elaborate artwork was prided, and competitions were held to see whose boomerang design was the best.

The detail was outstanding. The artwork was magnificent.

The Australian aboriginals were also always great lovers of sport, and even today they have taken to Australian rules football very naturally. They are our best players by far.

The Australian aboriginals had two, or more types of boomerangs then.

One was for hunting with, another was for throwing, at their sporting events.

Still another type was thrown into the air not to strike their prey, but very cleverly to act as a decoy to distract the animal or bird, so that the hunter could catch it more unawares, or perhaps to get it to run into one of their hidden nets, or traps.

Their idea of sport was more intelligent than ours.

They did not throw their boomerangs just to see whose stayed in the air the longest or whose went the furthest. No, they were far more sophisticated than that.

At their larger mass tribal gatherings when they would hold their competitions, the winning boomerang was determined on the precision of its accurate return to the thrower, as well as the speed, and the quality or smoothness of its total overall flight.

After thought, and footnotes

The modern ones are constructed from carbon fibre, fibreglass, and other more fancily named resin materials. They are constructed in this way so as they can be more aerodynamically designed, and more easily mass produced, of course.

This is always the real reason.

But these modern day ones can be thrown a distance of over 200 yards, that's 600 feet, and still come right back to you at your feet.

So, getting away from wood, I suppose, does save the trees, and make for a better throw, and probably too this has been the reason for the modern day popularity of boomerangs.

There are now international championships run every year where the competitors more or less just throw away something that then comes back to them.

A very easy sport, no walking, no running around.

You just have to stand in the same spot and throw. If you throw badly you might even, as a result of your throw, wipe out one or more of your fellow competitors. After all boomerangs are still a formidable weapon in the right hands, or even in the left hand, or in the wrong hands too, for that matter.